WHO coronavirus probe team visits China's 'propaganda' exhibit, hospital in Wuhan

The team of the World Health Organisation (WHO) experts sent to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus on January 30 toured the ‘propaganda’ exhibition celebrating China’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan. Following a meeting at the hospital that treated the first confirmed patients of the highly-infectious disease originated in Wuhan in December 2019, the experts visited a cavernous exhibition that lauded Asian country’s emergency response of the Wuhan health provinces during critical early stages of the pandemic while hailing the ability of Chinee Communist Party’s leadership of controlling the crisis.

On their second full day of work on Saturday, the WHO team of independent experts went to Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital which was one of the city’s first to handle the COVID-19 patients over a year ago when the virus was not globally known. Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans had written on Twitter, “Just back from a visit at Jinyintan hospital, that specialised in infectious diseases and was designated for treatment of the first cases in Wuhan” and noted that the accounts were “ quite similar to what I have heard from our ICU doctors.”

The WHO’s Wuhan visit comes with political baggage as China had reportedly refused the team access until mid-January and there is a range of unanswered questions over the origins of the novel coronavirus and the timing of information that was relayed to the United Nations (UN) health agency. The experts had met face-to-face for the first time with Chinese scientists on January 29 before the team visited another early site of the outbreak,  the Hubei Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital.

Read - WHO Team Visits Wuhan Museum On Early COVID-19

Read - WHO Team Visits 2nd Wuhan Hospital In Virus Investigation

‘All hypothesis on the table’

While there are several speculations and conspiracy theories floating around the origin of COVID-19, WHO had said that “all hypothesis are on the table” as the team of experts who specialise in animal health, virology, food safety and epidemiology worked to understand the turn of events in the early days of the pandemic. 

In a statement on Twitter, WHO had said that the investigators had already requested “detailed underlying data” and planned to speak with early responders as well as some of the first patients. Meanwhile, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan also sought to manage the expectations of the world with the trip.

Success "is not measured necessarily in absolutely finding a source on the first mission," he said in a conference before adding, “This is a complicated business, but what we need to do is gather all of the data... and come to an assessment as to how much more we know about the origins of the disease and what further studies may be needed to elucidate that.”

Read - WHO Team Visits 2nd Wuhan Hospital In Virus Investigation

Read - WHO Mission Team Leaves Wuhan Hospital